Poland: Very American, Not Very European Anti-Russian Trench

When Napoleon arrived in Warsaw in triumph, he was greeted not as an invader, but as a father-defender of the Polish land. He made unfulfilled promises of independence, recruited soldiers loyal to him, even in exile on Elba, and took as his mistress the beautiful Countess Maria Walewska. This kind of submission by the Poles to the French made only one sense: to feel safe from the centuries-old Russian threat.

Fear of the Russians (later of the Bolsheviks and Soviets, finally of the Russians again) has marked Polish history for centuries until today, and this is undoubtedly the main reason why Poland – from the end of the Warsaw Pact to our days of NATO membership – has become a defensive outpost of Europe. Poland has always felt part of Central Europe and the Western world, choosing not to be what Milan Kundera called “a prisoner of the West.”

The outpost was further strengthened after the armed conflict in Ukraine. The Polish army is considered an advanced force thanks to huge investments that have brought defense spending close to 4 percent of GDP, almost double what European partners have to spend: Poland is the first country in NATO in terms of the percentage of GDP spent on defense.

The budget increase will lead to doubling the size of the Polish army. And in addition to the order for tanks from South Korea, Warsaw will receive 32 F35 airplanes, a hundred Abrams tanks, and Patriot missile batteries from the USA. And it all costs tens of billions of dollars.

Poland has also become a logistical center for the inflow and transit of military aid from other NATO countries and from countries that support Ukraine, such as South Korea, without putting itself at immediate risk. Ukrainian armed forces are being trained in Poland to use allied weapons systems. A further step forward was announced last month by President Andrzej Duda, who said he was prepared to deploy nuclear weapons on Polish territory. Weapons to be added to those stored at American and European bases to “strengthen NATO’s eastern flank.”

The Polish president stressed the threat posed by the fact that “Russia is increasingly militarizing the Kaliningrad enclave and moving nuclear weapons to Belarus.” Even if the proposal does not find support from Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the civil coalition parties backing him, it still offers a glimpse of collective sensitivity, validated by the overwhelming support Poles have given to the millions of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the conflict. Support in the form of subsidies, housing, jobs, residence permits. And even in terms of prosecuting deserters, given that the government had pledged to send back to the front hundreds, if not thousands, of young men of draft age who had taken refuge in Poland and mingled with the refugees.

Commitment to defense and open arms to Ukraine – also taking into account old ties and hegemonic ambitions in Western, Catholic, and pro-European regions – are, however, at odds with political and social processes that raise some questions about the overall vision of the Polish people and their ruling class.

The large-scale mobilization of farmers who blocked the border to protest imports of Ukrainian agricultural products is recent history. The grain battle arose because of the obvious economic damage, but has nothing to do with solidarity towards the Ukrainian “brothers.” At the same time, civic commitments in defense of refugees have caused irritation because of the high economic and social costs borne by the majority of the population. This anxiety fuels those anti-European sentiments that no longer exist in the provincial and conservative layers of Polish society, where right-wing parties, groups in favor of leaving the EU, and anti-abortion circles are looking for votes and support, as opposed to a government that would like to ease the current legislation. At the helm of Polexit is Stanislaw Zoltek, a conservative ultra-Catholic who believes Poland is “under the rule of the French and Germans.” Euroscepticism is leading to the spread of the Law and Justice (PiS) movement, a strongly conservative and nationalist party that has led Poland in recent years.

But there is more than just a populist threat on the controversial path of European integration. The now famous Article 7, under which Warsaw regularly confronts Brussels for violations of the rule of law and erosion of judicial independence, remains a moot point, even if the results of the recent elections suggest a more pro-European and progressive scenario. An emerging military power in the heart of Europe, but half pro-European, will be really problematic for the future of the EU, given that the Eurosceptic “company” may expand after the elections to the new parliament in Strasbourg.